Token marketing is something that lots of people in business do.  They know they need to market. They know they ought to market.  They know their business success depends on their commitment to marketing.

They feel guilty when they fail to market – and yet they’d rather not.  Their solution is token marketing.

Are you guilty of token marketing?

Do you force yourself to do some marketing? Do you dabble with marketing, promising yourself that one day your agent or your publicist will handle all this for you?  Do you do a bit of blogging every now and then, or add a page to your website occasionally, when you feel you really must do something? Have you had a postcard or a bookmark printed to promote your book, but you haven’t given them out?

If this is your approach to marketing, then you’re definitely involved with token marketing.

Token marketing rarely works.

You already know that token marketing doesn’t work unless you’re very, very lucky.  You know that your efforts won’t pay off, because you’re only putting in a very small amount of time and effort.  You only do any marketing occasionally, and your heart just isn’t in the job.

If you’re honest with yourself you’re actually rather relieved when your marketing doesn’t work because you can now say:

“I tried ………….. and it doesn’t work.”

You don’t want it to work because you don’t want to spend your time marketing.

You’re the marketing manager

Unfortunately for your writing business you’re the marketing manager.  If you are only undertaking token marketing you’re not going to make progress with developing your writing business.  You’re not going to achieve the success you’re looking for.

Therefore, you need to change your approach to marketing.

Instead of token marketing think about the results you want to achieve.  You want subscribers to your blog.  You want visits to your website.  You want people to attend an event at which you’re speaking.  You want to sell books at an event you’re taking part in at your local library or at your local bookshop.

These things don’t just happen.

Think about your token marketing strategies and be honest.  If you put in twice as much time to making them work, would they deliver the results you want?

• What else might work better than the approaches you’ve used thus far?
• If you were to use two or three additional approaches to marketing what could you achieve?
• If you applied your efforts consistently to your marketing, what might you achieve?

You probably know the answer.

Stop token marketing.  Start effective marketing.

Marketing for beginners

Here’s the list of things to do.

• Allocate a budget of time to marketing.
• Set a target for your marketing achievements.
• Choose two or three marketing methods to try out.  Be prepared to add to them.
• Start a marketing “campaign” that will last for at least two months.

Do the marketing and give it the same level of commitment as you give to your writing.

Then check the results.  How much better are you doing with your new approach to marketing . . . and what else could you try now?

See also:

I’d rather not . . .

Writers’ Marketing Mistakes (1) Not doing any marketing

Writers’ Marketing Mistakes (2) Telling yourself marketing can wait

Today I’m starting a series of posts about the marketing mistakes that writers make. Writers make marketing mistakes, just like every one in business.

These mistakes can severely impair their chances of success.  Probably the biggest mistake is to deny that marketing is in the writer’s job description.

Are you tempted to say any of the following?

If you are, then you know you’re making one of the most common marketing mistakes.

Marketing – it’s not my job!

Whose job is it then?

You have books to sell and a personal brand to build.  Your publisher – if you have one – is interested in making money from your books, just as you are.

However, your publisher can hedge his bets.  He has lots of titles from which he can make money.  You don’t have as many.

Therefore, you need to market your book so that your publisher will succeed with your books.

This will make publishing more of your work a good bet.  It will also mean that when decisions are being made about where to put additional marketing resource, your books will be on the list.

Success breeds success.  You need to make sure you succeed.

You will have taken a huge step forward once you accept that you’re in marketing, and in sales, too, for that matter.

Marketing – I don’t know where to begin.

Unless you come from a sales and marketing background then you’re in the same boat as a lot of other people.

We all have to start marketing somewhere.

We all have to start learning and experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t.

In the case of most small businesses, and I include writers in this category, the biggest problem is usually not using enough marketing strategies often enough.

If you’re using five approaches to marketing yourself and your work, increase the list to ten in the next month.

If you’re not really doing any marketing, then now’s the time to begin.

Make a list of ways you could promote your work and get started.

Marketing – it’s difficult.

Everything’s difficult when you’re an outsider making a start on something new.

The best way to overcome the difficulties is to have clear idea of what you would like to achieve.

For example: You want to get your book(s) mentioned in ten relevant blogs in the next six weeks.

Then think about which blogs and where you could look to get some publicity.

Also, do yourself a favour and look for writers who are marketing themselves successfully.  What are they doing?  Could you do that?

Is it worth getting in touch with them and so on? Learn from other people’s successes.

That way you’ll make progress quickly and avoid some of the types of mistakes that can set you back.

Marketing – it takes up a lot of time.

It does.

Most small business people, including writers, would rather spend their time on other aspects of running their business.  Trainers would rather be delivering training.  Writers would rather be writing their features or their novels.

However, nothing happens until something is sold, so marketing is a necessary part of business – and writing – success.

Every one in business is a marketer and a sales person.

As soon as you accept that and you start to become comfortable with that fact, you’ll definitely make progress.

So here’s one marketing mistake that it’s very easy to overcome.

See also:

Promote Yourself

Entrepreneurship for writers